Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 45
And just as Rosie the Riveter had supported the war on the home front, so had we supported Mr. Faboo on the classroom front. We’d banded together and shared our gifts. Now it was time for us to band together to share our belief in him.
I called Wesley that night, and told him to pass it on, starting with Babette.
The next day, I asked Mom if I could borrow some things.
“Sure,” she said absentmindedly while she dusted around another new trophy. Grandma Jo must have been really good at car racing. “Do you see this? Do you see?” She pointed at the trophy.
“Nah, that’s been there since Grandma Jo moved in, Mom.” I had a promise to keep to Grandma Jo.
“It has not,” she said, but her voice was soft and wondering, like maybe she thought it might have been there the whole time after all.
I caught a ride with Chip’s mom that morning, and she said we were cute in our matching Rosie the Riveter outfits. She said she admired our gumption. She said we owed it to ourselves to get as much enjoyment out of our education as we could. She said we would probably get detention.
But when we walked into the school, we saw that Wesley had done what I asked. The hallways were flooded with Rosies. Even Clara the Poet was wearing an all-black version.
Principal Rooster and Miss Munch stood next to the Heirmauser head, smiling and clapping their hands and congratulating Mr. Smith on inspiring his students in such a creative way. Chip clapped his hands, too. He looked really proud.
Mr. Smith was super angry and told us to read silently for the whole class period. I guessed it was his way of giving us detention without giving us detention.
That afternoon, Mr. Faboo came back to the picnic table for a final brushup. We marched out to meet him, a Rosie the Riveter army.
“Rosalind Palmer Walter,” he said, wiping the corners of his eyes. “The inspiration behind the Rosie the Riveter song.”
“Just like you’re our inspiration, Mr. Faboo,” Clover Prentice said.
There was a chorus of “Yeah!” and “We believe in you!” and one “This bandanna’s giving me a headache”—but we ignored that one.
“Thank you, students,” he said. “You will never know how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me.”
But he looked kind of sad when he said it.
Sad and nervous.
The next day was the test.
TRICK #29
THE FRIENDSHIP FLOURISH
I still hated pantyhose.
But a promise was a promise, and we had all made a pact to wear our Act After the Fact outfits to the testing site to support Mr. Faboo. I wrestled into mine, the whole time repeating to myself that they were leggings, not pantyhose. It didn’t work.
“You’re up early. Where are you off to?” Grandma Jo asked when I came into the kitchen. She was peeling an orange, dropping the peel on a paper towel spread out on the table in front of her. She had a black smudge across one cheek.
“My teacher has a test today, and we’re all going to cheer him on.”
“Today? But it’s not even a school day.” She was right. It was a Saturday morning. In my opinion, it was just mean to make a guy get up on a Saturday morning to take a test, but Mr. Faboo didn’t have a choice, so we didn’t have a choice. She bit into an orange slice. “You must really like this teacher.”
I grabbed a bag of miniature cinnamon rolls and sat across from her. “Yeah,” I said. “I didn’t realize it until he wasn’t around anymore, but I really do.”
“That’s usually the way things happen,” she said. “After Grandpa Rudy died, all I could think about was all the fights we had. Sometimes he was a real pain in my neck. Always off doing his magic at one end of the town or another. Leaving his socks on the living room floor. Snoring. Did you know that every now and then, when he was really tired, he liked to put his underwear in the freezer? Said it woke him right up when he put them on. Woke me up, too, to open the freezer for a bag of peas and instead find a crusty old pair of boxers resting on the ice cube trays.”
I giggled. “I’m sure it did.”
She popped another orange segment into her mouth and chewed. “The thing was, after he was gone, I missed that. I even kept his favorite pair of underwear and put them in the freezer. It was comforting having them there, in a weird way. It was sort of like that darn rabbit of his. The thing was always getting loose, and it aggravated your grandfather to no end. He talked and talked about taking it out to a field and setting it free. But then when it went missing, Grandpa Rudy grieved something awful. He looked for that rabbit forever. And kept his dish for a long time, too.”
“I still have it,” I said.
Her eyebrows shot up. “You do?”
“Yep. It says ‘Bill’ on it. It was in the trunk.”
A small grin crept across Grandma Jo’s face, like she was remembering something funny. “I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised about that,” she said. “The old softie. Anyway, what I’m saying to you is this.” She took the bag from me, shook out the last cinnamon roll, and set it on the table in front of me. “Make this disappear.” I tucked it into my palm using sleight of hand. “Now make it reappear.” I did. She pointed to the roll. “As a magician, you’re used to always being able to make things reappear. Now make it disappear again.” I did. “And reappear.” I did, but before it could even hit the table, she snatched it and stuffed it into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed. “But life just doesn’t always work like that. Sometimes things are just gone forever, and you have to learn